Releases

A release in the curl project means packaging up all the source code that isin the master branch of the code repository, signing the package, tagging thepoint in the code repository, and then putting it up on the website for theworld to download.

It is one single source code archive for all platforms curl can run on. It isthe one and only package for both curl and libcurl.

We never ship any curl or libcurlbinaries from the project with oneexception: we host official curl binaries built for Windows users. All theother packaged binaries that are provided with operating systems or on otherdownload sites are done by gracious volunteers outside of the project.

As of several years back, we make an effort to do our releases on an eightweek cycle and unless some really serious and urgent problem shows up we stickto this schedule. We release on a Wednesday, and then again a Wednesday eightweeks later and so it continues. Non-stop.

For every release we tag the source code in the repository with the curlversion number and we update thechangelog.

We had done a total of 265 releases by February 2025. The entire releasehistory and changelog is available in ourcurl releaselog.

Release cycle

Daily snapshots

Every single change to the source code is committed and pushed to the sourcecode repository. This repository is hosted on github.com and is using gitthese days (but has not always been this way). When building curl off therepository, there are a few things you need to generate and set up thatsometimes cause people some problems or just friction. To help with that, weprovide daily snapshots.

The daily snapshots are generated daily (clever naming, right?) as if arelease had been made at that point. It produces a package of all source codeand all files that are normally part of a release and puts it in a package anduploads it tothis special place to allowinterested people to get the latest code to test, to experiment or whatever.

The snapshots are kept for around 20 days until deleted.